- [Instructor] Right.
Let me show you a few examples of
how this posing principle can really help you out.
So on the left, I ask Wutu to sit on the edge
of this little block here and turn his face towards the sun.
And you can see how he's just, he's there and he's jamming.
And then I can figure out the composition of
where I want the light and the shadows to be.
And the image on the right was captured right around noon.
So often people say that's a horrible time to photograph,
but one of the things you can do is integrate in a hat
or sunglasses and it can create sort of a fun mood or vibe.
And this guy Don, he's such a cool guy.
So I kind of dig the chair,
and once he sits in that, he settles.
And that's kind of the theme here.
You're going to see this sort of settling moment.
And what that allows the viewer to do, I think as well,
is to relax a little bit as they're viewing the image.
It's not like, oh,
I need to really hurry and figure this out.
You're like, oh, like someone's there sitting down
on the hood of a car or inside of the car.
I love this photograph.
This is the same guy we saw earlier with the car
or maybe up in the mountains.
And so when you ask someone to sit down,
often what you'll see is it creates
a lot of dynamic shapes in their body.
And often they will create these shapes by themselves.
Like I didn't ask him to cross his legs over,
I didn't ask him to fold his hands.
I said, hey, what if you just sit in between that stuff
and then look off to the right?
Or what if you sit on the edge of the bench,
kind of scoot towards the edge, and in this case she did.
Or sit up on the little railing of the bench
and then look off towards the sun
or sit at the base of your studio.
And then in this case, the camera height's a little higher.
When people sit, you can often get higher,
especially maybe if you're shorter or if they're taller.
So can help you create this sort of up outlook,
which can be cool.
You have to be careful not to overdo it,
but it's a subtle thing.
Or these guys sitting in different chairs, one in a car,
one inside of a store.
You can sit in sort of a dreamy and romantic way.
You can sit in a way where you're doing something
like our guy on the left, which we talked about before,
he's reading or pretending to read,
or Jessica on the right here
where she's sitting and then looking off in the distance.
And you can work with this kind of concept
and not always have to show that they're sitting,
but I think the user kind of feels it.
They're like, oh, they're like, here they are.
They're present.
And whether or not you show what they're sitting on,
it gives you, as a photographer,
this is one of the reasons why this's a secret.
It gives you a second to sort of figure it out.
Because if people are moving all the time,
it can be so hard.
Like the light's changing.
Oh my gosh, they're over there
and then they're over there and they can't figure out
I missed the shot.
But once they sit, they're going to kind of sit still for you
and you're going to say, yeah, what if you tilt your head
that way or fold your hands in front of you?
Again, hands, we want 'em to be nice and soft, right?
Or what if you lean forward,
kind of put your hands on your legs
or your forearms on your knees.
Guy on the right is a famous stunt man, super cool guy.
And in this case, you can kind of see
how these sitting postures, you know,
they definitely create a kind of mood.
And we're going to see a couple images
we've seen before, right?
My mom's sitting, and of course that
gives her a little bit of peace.
She was so anxious about this.
And so she was like scurrying all around.
She has a lot of energy, but once she sat down, it was fine.
The mom and the kid, or in this case a commercial shoot,
and asking someone to sit down on a pillow,
sit down on a bench, sit on a stool,
sit down in a chair in your studio, sit inside of your car.
And so the sitting thing is really
a secret, secret weapon.
And exploring how to have people sit in a way
that isn't how they necessarily sit in a chair.
So these are the last two images
that I have a little bonus for you.
But notice how Colette on the left, she's our painter,
the one wearing roller skates, same shoot, different outfit.
Rather than leaning back in the chair
and slouching, I have her come a little bit forward.
And then Phoenix on the right,
rather than sitting like she's driving the car,
I have her open the door
and then lean a little bit to the camera.
So often one of my big tricks
with sitting posing is I have the subject
come a little bit forward.
I want a little bit less of a slouch.
I still want presence,
and I still want them to be a little bit dynamic,
but I don't want them to be lost
in the chair, if that makes sense.
All right, the last little bonus I wanted to show here was,
it's an illustration of this idea that when we're working
with posing, we need to keep in mind
that we're integrating this into everything else.
So here I have a sitting pose. She is on a stool.
I have a posing table that has kind of black velvet on it,
so you can't see it,
but I need to retouch the image to finish it off.
So the light, I think, is amazing.
I think the pose is really cool.
So she's sitting slightly leaning onto her hand.
When you lean, you never want to overdo the lean.
So, or at least in my opinion,
I like to have a little more subtle lean.
Of course, it depends on your intent and story and all that.
And again, here, just to kind of highlight
what I'm looking at is sometimes in lighting you can have
these highlights that draw the eye in a little bit too much.
Or maybe you have a color of a garment
that you want to slightly change.
I wanted a little bit brighter and lighter.
And so that's what I did is I just modified those
and retouched those in.
And you can see sort of the before and after.
And I wanted to add that in here
because I know this course is not about retouching,
although I have courses on those topics.
It's about posing.
But we have to remember that yes, posing is so,
so important, but also we need
to integrate posing into the rest of the things that we do
as a photographer, which is composition,
working with light camera settings, and so much more.
So I wanted to include this just as a little bit of a bonus
to remind us that as, yes,
we are focusing on posing our subjects.
We also need to keep in mind
all of the other things as well.